[Army 352P CWO]

I have a '79 SC with the original CIS equipment, US spec. I've put about 20K miles on it in the last 6 yrs of ownership without any CIS problems.

Recently it started to intermittently (about 25% of the time) give me problems starting - it could happen either cold or hot. When the problem occurred it would either catch and die, or not catch at all.

In my trouble shooting, I discovered that if I raised the air flow sensor plate lever with the ignition 'On' (in the key #2 position) that I would sometime just hear a 'click' from the front of the vehicle with none of the fuel injector 'squeal' but that other times the fuel injectors were squealing appropriately. If I didn't hear the squeal, by applying a little forward or rearward pressure to the sensor plate level as I raised it I could often get the squeal to occur. But sometimes even that wouldn't do it.

I thought that the fuel distributor plunger might be getting hung up, so I removed the mixture control unit and the fuel distributor and reassembled per the instructions in Bentleys. Nothing looked too dirty or gummed up, but I still cleaned the mixture control unit mechanisms and the plunger with some air intake parts cleaner. The plunger moved smoothly and freely in the fuel distributor bore and I was careful to never let it come completely out. I reassembled the unit, including a new fuel distributor O-ring (never saw an old one when I disassembled in the first place), a new air flow housing gasket, and new fuel line sealing rings.

Now, the car runs worse. I still have the intermittent starting problem - only now it's much worse - like the car starts less than 5% of the time. And I still have the intermittent fuel injector squeal when raising the sensor plate lever, even though I always hear the 'click' from the front of the vehicle. Additionally, the engine won't idle. When I do manage to get it started, I can only keep it going if I give it gas and keep the RPM's up over 2,000.

I didn't touch any of my fuel/air adjustments when I did this.

Any ideas what's going on with either of these problems? Either (1) the intermittent fuel injector squeal or (2) the new not idling problem?

I've already spent a couple hours searching the forum and couldn't find anything that I thought was similar. Thanks.